The Gateway Center is open on a nightly basis to homeless people who need a warm place to sleep during the cold weather.
The center will offer many more services when it officially opens in the spring, but for now, it will be utilized to prevent anyone from freezing overnight.
“We are a compassionate city,” Katie Simon, a public affairs specialist for the CABQ (City of Albuquerque) Family and Community Services told KOB 4 News. “We are not going to let anyone freeze.”
The Gateway Center will only be open to 50 people per night, and guests will be asked to leave each morning. The city said it’s opening the Gateway Center just for emergency beds to help people get out of the cold.
“Our street outreach partners will be identifying good candidates and referring them, and we will have bus transportation in and out of the Gibson Health Hub in the morning. Folks will not be allowed to be there during the day,” Simon said, according to KOB 4 News.
Other shelters still have space, but city officials stressed it is important to have another location available to escape the winter weather.
Not everyone in the neighborhood is happy about the plan.
“The whole purpose of Gateway is that it would be a referral system and (when) people are referred in, they’re engaging in the programs and services on-site and would have the freedom to come and go as they please,” Melinda Frame, chair of the Homelessness Solutions Committee for the Parkland Hills Neighborhood Association, told KOB 4 News.
City officials said they will be strict with who they accept at Gateway.
“We did let the neighborhoods know that we were intending to open up these emergency beds at our first meeting,” Simon said, according to KOB 4 News. “So no one should have been completely blindsided there.”
Frame said her organization will continue to monitor the situation.
“We’re just going to continue to attend those meetings,” she told KOB 4 News. ‘We’re going to continue to advocate for our neighborhoods. I mean, we’ve been saying we need more street outreach in our communities. I definitely think we need to have more street outreach.”
The city said this emergency shelter is expected to stay open until the Gateway Center's official opening this spring.
